Posted
by
BeauHDon Monday August 01, 2016 @09:25PM
from the free-of-charge dept.

BarbaraHudson writes: When is a deadline not a deadline? The Register is reporting that the Windows 10 upgrade is still free for 7/8.1 users. [Microsoft] had previously said that those who use assistive technologies would continue to be eligible after the July 29th deadline had passed, and I pointed out in a story last month that Microsoft hadn't figured out yet how they would be able to tell who would be eligible. Looks like they never did figure that one out. [The Register reports:] "Microsoft's year-long Windows 10 free upgrade offer ended over the weekend, but it's still possible to secure Redmond's finest -- even the new Anniversary Update -- for the low low price of 0.00 in whatever currency you prefer. The free upgrade is reserved for those who use assistive technologies, the many features that magnify text, offer text-to-speech or otherwise assist those who don't see or hear with the perfect acuity. But The Register browsed the site and found no checks before downloading. It looks like it's open to anyone."

It looks like many of us suspected - the deadline was a "soft" one. It encouraged people who were on the fence to jump, bumping up the numbers. Can't really blame them, if they hadn't set an artificial deadline, people would just keep putting it off.

If they had killer assistive tech without the data mining, I'd probably give it a whirl... but when simple things like the screen magnifier give me nausea and don't close by hitting ESC but need you to either remember a keyboard shortcut or kill the process manually, I'm a bit leery. Especially since the screen reader doesn't work until you're logged in. Imagine a forced update that makes the machine not boot - no screen reader, what are you going to do except ask someone else for help? Forced updates are a deal-breaker for those using assistive technology.

Yup. As hard as they tried to push Windows 10 on us, it doesn't make sense that they would vigorously enforce the deadline - which, as you suggest, likely was only intended to create a sense of urgency. ("This offer is limited, so call now!") However, the "assistive" loophole seems unlikely to produce large numbers of additional installs. So, I'm still expecting them to come out with some sort of excuse like "Due to popular demand, we've decided to extend the deadline, yada, yada, yada."

I'd guess that anyone over about 40 could have a valid claim for assistive technology given what happens to your vision as you age. Over 50 and you probably need tech like turning up the volume knob. I upgraded before the deadline so we're running Windows 10 just fine. BTW, my main system is running Mac OS X and Windows 7 - I have a few rarely used machines that I upgraded.

You seem to be asking a question, but it's not clear exactly what you're asking. I'd suggest you look at the html source of your comment (try "inspect" in Chrome) and then google "rel nofollow". That might help. It might at least stop you pointlessly spamming forums.

Technically, except it has an odd hash-id: "?tduid=(3d0a9b914f4e1448707e8ed162c69bb7)(266696)(1503186)(skim33330X911647Xa68e5caea18d748c47809d1b2ce9d04b)()"
The "reserve windows 10 [microsoft.com]" link without that, works perfectly fine - it would seem.

If you didn't accept Microsoft's many attempts to install Windows 10 and didn't fall for the tricks, why would you willingly install it now? Why would you open yourself up to the advertising and spying? That's like building a wall around your country's border and then willingly allowing Muslims to enter. It just doesn't make any sense.

They're not trying very hard to make people pay for windows 10. From the free versions for OEMs making tablets to the insider program open to the public to the arrrrr me matey win 7 keys flipping into valid installs to this. When you think about it windows is still the only mainstream OS that costs money. OSX, *nix, Android, IOS are all free to the owners of the hardware. It's almost like microsoft wants to make windows free but the shareholders or someone higher up (bill gates maybe?) is against it happening across the board.

Of those the only hardware company there is apple and I doubt IOS and OSX are paid off by the hardware. It would be the app stores that come with the OS that generate them more money. microsoft is the odd one out here where they should be pushing the app store out to as many windows users as possible but they still put up that barrier with a OS that officially still costs money.

Their motivation has changed. They still want Enterprise to pay for it, but they want consumers to use it, thereby subjecting themselves to telemetry, data mining, and OS-level advertising. MS has decided that consumer data is worth more than consumer money. They're obsessed with users as a commodity now; that's why they bought Skype and LinkedIn. They don't care about those services, they want the users.

The Win10 deadline came and went as almost everyone suspected, and with this change in consumer strategy they have zero incentive to raise the "price". I expect them to start moving up the non-enterprise end of life dates on previous versions instead. Win7 support ends in 2020? Not so fast, it's 2018. If you miss that deadline, pay $119 for the "safety and security" of Win10.

what most people miss is that trying to figure out how to make people use the store and monitoring how much people user the store and what mouse click the interaction flow with the store stops is the reason for 98% of the tracking in win10. they think that tracking will provide them with some secret super insight into why people aren't using the windows appstore.

enterprise they want to shell up a monthly cost. and to still use the store and sto

The Win10 deadline came and went as almost everyone suspected, and with this change in consumer strategy they have zero incentive to raise the "price". I expect them to start moving up the non-enterprise end of life dates on previous versions instead. Win7 support ends in 2020? Not so fast, it's 2018. If you miss that deadline, pay $119 for the "safety and security" of Win10.

I'm sure we could get more unwanted nagware or telemetry "features" on Win7, but they've never messed with already promised support deadlines. That would make all their corporate/enterprise customers question the validity of their support guarantees, it'd be shooting themselves in the foot in a major way. And I really doubt Microsoft will try to collect money on upgrades, sure they had to put a deadline and try to scare people into upgrading now rather than later but I'm sure there will be loopholes and new rounds to "encourage" people to upgrade. Feels good to get a $119 upgrade for free if you're smart, right? Setting a ridiculously high sticker price and slashing it is the oldest salesman trick in the book.

They are slowly breaking Windows 7 to "encourage" people to upgrade. New security patches seem to get barely an testing and often cripple performance of the thing they are fixing. Network performance in particular has taken a massive hit over the last year or two. 30 second delays opening network drives, incredibly slow VPNs. A fresh install of SP1 is fine, but after you install the hundreds of megs of updates...

I'm worried 8.1 will go the same way. With a bit of luck the EU will force them to produce a goo

They can't shorten thise dates without incurring a lawsuit. For Windows 7 and Windows 8 they were established when the product was sold. If they tried to cut support off early they'd be in breach of contract.

That is a lot of RAM for a Vista install. I had 4 Gigs which was far more than enough back then. I was thinking you meant 32 Megabytes, but that is very small for the time as most work stations of that period had 1 or 2 gigs of RAM.

Back then with that type of setup, why didn't you use Windows Server 2003 or 2008?

One of the features of the latest update is improved accessibility. All operating systems have a long way to go in this area.

Perhaps, though some are a lot better than others - iOS is apparently recommended by a lot of groups for the disabled because of its extensive accessibility features (especially the blind). As is OS X. This is because of their general architecture that provides a lot of it "for free" with no developer involvement. So every time Apple makes an improvement, all applications get it as we

Considering all the trouble I went to in order to ENSURE that W10 didn't infect my 'doze box, this news is.... unhelpful.Now, if I can get WoT working under Linux and a video editor that doesn't make me want to scream and can afford, I'd be done with Microsoft.(Yes, I know about OpenShot. No, I don't want to change to it. Remember I said I didn't want to scream?)

Ok, it wasn't particularly difficult to call, being that Microsoft told us pretty much every single thing ahead of time, per my link in that thread.

I wonder what mandatory updates will have in store for the Windows boxes? One thing we know for sure is, someone will post a massive shell script that invokes binaries, diddlefucks services, and uses some third party tool to mitigate the impact to all the xbox OS PCs, and somehow that will be ok, because Windo

Even if you pay for a Win10 license, you still get the Start menu ads, forced telemetry etc.
I could kinda understand why when Win10 was for free, but how do they justify showing ads and not being able to disable Windows Store etc. when the user is on a payed for licenses?

This gives Microsoft a PR boost for sacrificing profits for the sake of users in need while taking steam out of piracy by giving a free upgrade to users who are realistically not going to pay. Someone in MS business department more than earned their salary.

REDMOND -- In what is sure to be judged by future historians to be a 'dick move' by Microsoft Corporation, the mega-corps' plans to fool, trick, and otherwise swindle the disabled into 'upgrading' to Windows 10 was revealed. "They don't know any better and generally don't have the mental awareness to realize the consequences of their actions.", says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, speaking from his command and control lair located under Mt. St. Helens, "They're prime candidates to become part of the ever-growi